DevOps Journeys of Large Enterprises Highlights

I read a recent comment to an article made by my friend Rob England (the IT Skeptic). Rob took exception with the authors point of view about that DevOps was so widely adopted. Rob asked the author of the article, “How many of the Fortune 500 are DevOps shops?”. My reaction to this was “Rob, not sure if you have noticed out in New Zealand, but there are a sizable number of Fortune 500 and other large enterprises that are DevOps shops now.” Maybe not a majority, but a sizable minority and growing every day. DevOps journeys of large enterprises are pretty well documented.

In fact my friend Gene Kim’s DevOps Enterprise Summit (where I last saw Rob) marches out one Fortune 500 (and other large organizations) after the next to hear their DevOps journey. It is one of the things tat makes that event so special.

Further proof of DevOps adoption by Fortune 500 and other large enterprises was also readily apparent at the recent IBM InterConnect event I attended in Las Vegas. As part of our video interviews and coverage of InterConnect I spoke to several IT leaders about their organizations DevOps transformation.

Continuing our release of videos from IBM InterConnect 2016 I wanted to highlight these DevOps journeys of large enterprises:

Our first journey is Hertz. You have probably heard of them. John LeFreniere of Hertz who is undertaking a huge transformation at Hertz updating their technology stack using DevOps, Cloud and Agile, had this to say about Hertz’s adoption of DevOps:

John says, “The DevOps methodology is in lock step with where we want to go.”

Another DevOps journey of a large enterprise was the Maersk story. Maersk if you don’t know is a large shipping company that has been around a long time. I spoke to Spencer Rodrigues and David Loughnane of Maersk.

As David says, “Devops is about us ultimately delivering a better customer experience.”

Let me give you one more large enterprise talking about their DevOps journey, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Thomas Seremet tells us about their journey.

Thomas said that Starwood started their DevOps journey in 2014. A piece of the journey that they have now really concentrated on is the cultural element of DevOps.

Finally, you don’t have to take my word for it. Let me give you one more interview, this one with Carmen DeArdo of Nationwide. Carmen is always one of my favorite interviews and besides leading Nationwide’s own journey, he has some great insight on DevOps in general. Here is what Carmen had to say:

For Carmen the difference at InterConnect this year “was seeing the journey and progression that different organizations are on”. Carmen said they have gone past just agile or CD and are now putting all of this together including changing of the culture.

So my opinion is that DevOps is well entrenched in Fortune 500 and other large enterprises. Maybe I live in the DevOps echo chamber though. What do you think? Would love to hear about more DevOps journeys.

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